Randomized Control Trial of Advance Care Planning in Primary Care

February 19, 2020 updated by: McMaster University

A Randomized Control Trial of an Advance Care Planning Intervention to Engaged Substitute Decision-makers in Primary Care

Sometimes people with health conditions become ill suddenly and can no longer speak for themselves and another person (such as a family member) will make health care decisions for them. This means it is important to think about your wishes and tell others about them. This is called advance care planning. When people have done advance care planning, if they become very sick and cannot speak for themselves they are more likely to get the kind of health care they want and it is easier for the people who make decisions for them. There are tools such as brochures, questionnaires, and videos that can help people learn about these things. This research is being to done to study whether using tools for advance care planning and goals of care discussions will improve how patients and their substitute decision makers do advance care planning. This study is a randomized trial. This means half of the people in this study will meet with someone at their family practice to talk about advance care planning and review some tools and half will get usual care (a Speak Up workbook). The study will 1) evaluate if reviewing the tools, and having help to complete them, helps patients and their substitute decision maker do advance care planning 2) if this intervention will encourage patients to talk to their family doctor about these issues.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

In prospective and randomized trials, advance care planning (ACP) significantly improves outcomes including increased likelihood that clinicians and families understand and comply with a patient's wishes, reduces hospitalization at the end of life, results in less intensive treatments at the end of life (according to patients' wishes) and increases use of hospice services. Trials have not been done in primary care. In this project, we aim to determine the efficacy of a care pathway designed to increase the quality and quantity of ACP in patients and their substitute decision-makers in primary care. The study is a multi-site, patient-based, unblinded, randomized trial conducted in family practices in Canada. Participants will be patients who are determined by their physician to be able to benefit from ACP, and the patient's substitute decision-maker. Participant pairs will be randomized to immediate intervention (care pathway) or delayed (8-12 weeks). The intervention is guided use of tools and decision aids to clarify values and preferences for treatments in the event of serious illness or near end of life. The outcomes will be substitute decision-maker engagement in ACP (including self-efficacy for enacting the role), patient engagement in ACP, and decisional conflict.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

61

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Canada
    • Ontario
      • Dundas, Ontario, Canada
        • Dundas Family Health Team
      • Dundas, Ontario, Canada
        • Michael West Doctor Office
      • Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8N 4A6
        • St. Joseph's Healthcare Hamilton
      • Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L7S 0A1
        • Burlington Family Health Team
      • Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8P 1H6
        • McMaster Family Health Team
      • Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8S 4K1
        • McMaster University Medical Centre
      • Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, L8V 5C2
        • Juravinski Cancer Centre Pain and Symptom Management Team

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

65 years and older (Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Patients being treated for serious illness in outpatient settings or;
  • Patients who could benefit from advance care planning self-assessed or assessed by their physician
  • Patient able and willing to identify a substitute decision-maker who will participate in the study
  • Patient cognitively able to participate

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Patient or their substitute decision-maker does not speak English
  • Patient unable to identify a substitute decision-maker who will consent to participation
  • Patient does not consent to participation

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Advance care planning education session
Delivery of an advance care planning education session at the family doctor's office
Behavioral: Advance care planning education session
Administration of values clarification tool, elicitation of preference for treatment options, if preference for resuscitation, shown an educational video about cardiopulmonary resuscitation, summary document of values and preferences created by a facilitator to share with doctor
Sham Comparator: Wait list control
The intervention is not provided.
Other: Wait list control
No intervention

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Advance care planning engagement of substitute decision-maker
Time Frame: 8 to 12 weeks (6 weeks for patients from cancer centre)
A survey of the substitute decision-maker's engagement in advance care planning
8 to 12 weeks (6 weeks for patients from cancer centre)

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Advance care planning engagement of patient
Time Frame: 8 to 12 weeks (6 weeks for patients from cancer centre)
A survey of the patient's engagement in advance care planning
8 to 12 weeks (6 weeks for patients from cancer centre)
Substitute decision-maker self-efficacy survey
Time Frame: 8 to 12 weeks (6 weeks for patients from cancer centre)
A survey of the substitute decision-maker's confidence to make future decisions
8 to 12 weeks (6 weeks for patients from cancer centre)
Decisional conflict
Time Frame: immediately after intervention
A modified short decisional conflict survey
immediately after intervention
Satisfaction with intervention
Time Frame: immediately after intervention
A satisfaction and endorsement survey on the process of the educational intervention
immediately after intervention

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

McMaster University

Collaborators

Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR)
Queen's University

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Michelle Howard, PhD, McMaster University

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Helpful Links

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

March 1, 2018

Primary Completion (Actual)

December 31, 2019

Study Completion (Actual)

December 31, 2019

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

August 2, 2017

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

August 2, 2017

First Posted (Actual)

August 4, 2017

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

February 20, 2020

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 19, 2020

Last Verified

January 1, 2019

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • 3714

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

No

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

product manufactured in and exported from the U.S.

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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